Checkpoint Baghdad : Iraq's National Soccer Team Gets Back on the Pitch

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Checkpoint Baghdad

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Babak Dehghanpisheh

Larry Kaplow

Rod Nordland

Lennox Samuels

Silvia Spring

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Iraq's National Soccer Team Gets Back on the Pitch

Larry Kaplow

Iraqis breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday as they learned their beloved national soccer team would be allowed to keep playing. FIFA, world soccer's governing body, rescinded a decision to suspend the Iraqi squad from qualifying matches for next year's World Cup tournament. The national team is set to play Australia in Brisbane on Sunday, when you can expect all televisions to be tuned in any place in Baghdad that's getting its share of the seven hours of daily city electricity.

Iraqi soccer is often called the only big national success story since the U.S. invasion and fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Despite the country's chaotic mayhem, dysfunctional government and decrepit utilities, Iraq came in fourth at the 2004 Olympics and won the Asian championship last year. The wins repeatedly sent Iraqis into the streets with dances and celebratory gunfire that sometimes alarmed U.S. troops. The team–a mix mainly of Arab Shiites and ethnic Kurds with one Sunni Arab star (see The Official Younis Mahmoud Website)–unites Iraqis in its success and diverts attention from bloodier matters. But it has also gone through its own episodes of raw bloodshed, division and politics.

Hussein's son Uday ran the country's sports establishment for years before the war. He infamously had players jailed and beaten when they failed to bring home wins. He also stifled their requests to play abroad where they could make real money.

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After the war, retired soccer stars Ahmed Radhi and Hussein Saeed engaged in a public feud over control for the newly liberated soccer domain. I interviewed Radhi in 2003. He was young and handsome but with an athlete's naiveté and clearly doomed against Saeed, an older and educated former player who had already reached high positions in the soccer union under Uday. Baghdad soccer fans would buzz with rumors about Radhi having Saeed's house raked with machine gun fire (others said it was a hand grenade) but Saeed, who I saw at a team practice in 2004 as he was flanked by Kalashnikov-wielding bodyguards, was secure in his hold on soccer power and had good connections in the game internationally.

Even amid their early post-war success, players would complain that the soccer administration wasted or stole money that they should have gone for things like good soccer shoes (players bought their own) and health insurance. Granted, sports organizations worldwide have a pretty long record for corruption and mismanagement.

It was a decision by the Iraqi government that apparently touched off the latest off-field drama. The cabinet of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disbanded the Iraqi Olympic Committee, claiming its leadership was corrupt and failing to hold required elections. The soccer federation, still run by Saeed, is under the committee's jurisdiction and was apparently also dissolved. FIFA, which held to a hands-off stance throughout much of Uday Hussein's sadistic rule of Iraqi soccer, pronounced this decision as illegitimate political interference. On Monday, it announced it would suspend the team's World Cup participation unless the Iraqi government reversed its action.

Widespread distress and news coverage ensued with frequent updates on the negotiations. The team arrived in Australia (they train outside Iraq for safety) on Tuesday. Coach Adnan Hamad, who steered the team through the 2004 Olympics, fretted that the controversy would prove a defeating distraction.

But Thursday the FIFA ban was reversed after the Iraqi government stipulated that it was not targeting the country's soccer federation in its move against the umbrella Olympic Committee. One of the first hints that a resolution was on the way came the night before in a report quoting none other than Ahmed Radhi, who for now appears to be back on workable terms with Saeed. Saeed assured him that the game would go and Australian officials were pushing to play the Sunday match so they would not lose the television revenues. Whatever the reason, now it's up to the players to overcome the chaos and win. They've done it before.

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Member Comments

Posted By: essamnaimi (August 3, 2008 at 4:30 PM)

as an iraqi soccer past player and a team fallower and after taking alots opinions from the iraqi sport fans ..we all came to one answer..let all the iraqi soccer federation go home to iraq if they are sereis about running the team or quit all together and let the real iraqis run the team and bring the real iraqis like falah hassan and thamer yosif..doglas azzeez and all who are willing to work like old times..for iraq not for thier pokets..for the good of the game and the good of the iraqis who are sick and tierd of these useres.....real iraqi soccer fan....det mich...8-2 2008...

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